Secretary’s love on secretary’s day, yeah lets begin. Angel’s first thought upon Mr. Dwight’s entrance into the office was, Yummy. The new boss must have played football in college. Basketball, maybe. He was tall.
Angel adjusted her blouse as he passed her on his way into his new office, a massive cardboard box in his arms. She could have gotten up to open his door for him, but then she would have missed the spectacle of those massive shoulders straining against his sport coat sleeves. So good.
“Ms. Richardson?” Oh geez, he was looking at her. She felt a guilty blush rising in her cheeks. Had she been ogling him too obviously? “Would you mind terribly helping me with this door?”
She made a few sounds that vaguely resembled words and sprang to her feet, smoothing her skirt more than necessary as she went to open the door. Handsome and polite. Oh, she was going to enjoy working for this one.
“Ms. Richardson, are you very busy today?” he was asking her. His mouth moved in very sensual ways when he spoke. She was entranced. “Ms. Richardson?”
“What? Oh!” Awkward. “Please, call me Angel. I’ve never gotten used to being called by my last name.” Had that covered well enough? He wasn’t giving her a strange look or anything. Of course, now he wasn’t looking at her at all. He’d turned away to start unpacking his things on the empty desk. She wanted to do something to catch his attention.
She glanced down at her blouse. Buttoned up to her neck? What was she thinking? She flicked at the buttons and managed to open the top two before Mr. Dwight turned back to her. He smiled, those blue eyes twinkling. Had he seen her little maneuver? If he was laughing at her, she’d–
“Then I suppose you should call me Ted,” he said, and now the smile he turned on her seemed to be kind, welcoming. He wanted her to call him by his first name. How…intimate. She enjoyed a little shiver of glee and then stepped toward him as he spoke again. “But I don’t think you’ve answered me. Are you busy today?”
“Busy? Oh…not terribly.” Understatement. She’d had nothing whatsoever to do while they’d looked for a replacement for that last bonehead, Graham. An administrative assistant was very little use without anything to assist or administrate.
“Perfect! Then you’re just the person to show me around this place. All I’ve seen so far is the conference room where they held the interviews. Well, and my office, of course.” He was so confident. But he’d have to be, wouldn’t he? To be an executive, and so young! He couldn’t have been over thirty. And she a dewy-eyed woman of…twenty-nine. Ish. Close enough, when she looked fresh out of college, if she did say so herself.
“I’d be glad to, Mr. Dwight…Ted.” Oho, now there was a name that could be screamed. Come on, Tedy-boy, just give me the chance.
“Fantastic.” Ted flashed her a toothy grin and gestured toward his box. “I’ll just get settled in and then I’ll come out to meet you at your desk, alright?”
Angel nodded. She’d need that time to freshen up. What had she been thinking, wearing this fuddy-dud skirt on the day a new boss was arriving? Well, she thought he’d be a fifty-something internal hire, like the last two. Still, she should have had more forethought. Oh, if she’d realized how unbearably hot he would be, she would have worn her hair down today!
She made it to the ladies’ room as fast as her heels allowed. At least those were sexy. She’d just bought a pair that was at least two inches too tall for a respectable office setting, and she loved every inch of them. Mmm….just like she’d love every inch of–
The bathroom door slammed open and one of the execs from down the hall — ugh, that boyish hair, that pantsuit, could she be any less feminine? — ducked into a stall. Angel resumed her preparations in front of the mirror, loosing another button on her blouse and loosening the bun at the nape of her neck, rewrapping it more messily so that it looked a little bedroom-tousled. Visuals never hurt.
She slapped some color into her cheeks and bit her lips red. She had some lip stick in her purse somewhere, didn’t she? Gloss, maybe? She dug past half-empty packs of gum and wadded tissues and loose change, and victoriously whipped out a tube of cherry chapstick. Close enough.
She pulled her skirt up a little higher. There, there was a little thigh. She turned, smoothing the skirt down over her butt and checking it in the mirror. Oh yes, her backside had always been quite an asset. Angel chuckled to herself.
She could do nothing about her glasses, or her lack of perfume. She would just have to play the cards she was dealt.
Ted was just emerging from his office as she arrived back at her desk. “Ready?” he asked, and she nodded eagerly. She turned to walk ahead of him, putting a little extra swish in her walk. If he didn’t notice that, then he was blind. Or gay. Oh God, she hoped he wasn’t gay.
But ten minutes later, when she was bent over trying to unjam the copier so she could show him all the machine’s quirks, she caught him staring down her shirt. Bingo! Not gay. She grinned as she finished her spiel about toner and paper size.
And later, when they were standing in the elevator, and he stood so close to her that their arms were touching? Oh, he felt it too. He definitely felt it. They smiled and laughed shyly at each other when they made contact, and neither of them moved away. Angel was more than a little excited.
She thought she ruined it when she made the stupid joke. She was telling Ted about the difficulties they’d had before all their old files were computerized, when she had to walk down three halls and a flight of stairs to get the tiniest bit of information.
“That would make it harder,” he’d said, and she’d replied, stupidly, before she had time to think–
“Yeah, but sometimes I like it hard.”
Oh. Dear. God. She did not just say that out loud. Ted flushed red and looked incredibly uncomfortable for a moment, and then he laughed, and all the twinkle came back, and for the rest of the tour, they touched more easily, and they were comfortable like they knew that soon they would be old friends, although neither of them acknowledged it.
***
Ted had been her boss for three weeks before It happened. It was the single most thrilling thing that had ever happened in her twenty-nine(ish) years of life.
Ted was working late on his first big project for corporate. He’d enlisted Angel’s help, supposedly because she had been around for projects like this long before Ted had come along, and she would have the expertise he needed. But it wasn’t her expertise he watched when he thought she wasn’t looking.
Angel had to ignore it; if she acknowledged it, he would feel he had to stop, and any opportunity of seeing that delicious body out from under all those layers of cotton and wool would be gone. They had to come at this sideways. They had to approach It without looking at It directly. They had to fall into it as if it was the only inevitable end to their work association, they had to mutually trick themselves into believing they hadn’t seen It coming.
Angel knew it was the beginning of the end when Ted spilled his coffee on her blouse. She was glad he didn’t use that most banal of cliches, the “let me get you out of those wet clothes” line, even though all she wanted him to do was rip her shirt clean in half and throw her down on the conference table.
She had bemoaned the fact that it was her favorite shirt. Yes, she owned four more almost identical to it. Yes, she’d played it up a little. Yes, she realized that he had a spare shirt and coat hanging on the back of his door in case of emergencies. Mmm…all she wanted to say was yes, yes, yes, all night long. She wouldn’t say no to anything that came out of his mouth.
He’d offered her his shirt so she could rinse the coffee out of her own, as she’d known he would. She had come back into the office with his white silk shirt mostly buttoned over her black lace bra. She’d tucked it back into her skirt, of course. Musn’t be too loud, or she’d scare the fish.
She just absolutely marveled at how soft the shirt was. Wasn’t it soft? She couldn’t get over how soft it was. Where did he ever find it?
She playfully rubbed the sleeve of it against his cheek, as if it wasn’t his own shirt that he’d had on his body probably a dozen times before, and knew exactly how soft it was. He didn’t know how soft it was with all her softness underneath, and that’s what he was thinking about now, she could tell. She could see it in the way his eyes followed the rise and fall of her chest beneath the silk. That black lace has a way of drawing the eye.
Oops! Was that her pen on the floor? They should really get back to work, shouldn’t they? She bent double to pick it up, using her favorite asset to draw his eyes down and raise his…ahem…up. And ye Gods, was that a shudder she saw out of the corner of her eye? Was Hansel picking up her bread crumbs?
She turned around slowly, twiddling the pen in her fingers. A few locks of hair were falling around her face now, freed from the loose bun. Her glasses had slid down her nose and she was looking up at him with her lips just a little open and her eyes wide and trusting and a little mischievous because she could see now that he wanted just what she wanted and all that was between them suddenly was heatheatheat—
Ted’s arm was around her waist and his other hand was gripping the back of her neck and his lips were merciless against hers and she loved it. He snapped her to him like a pair of magnets and she moaned a little in her throat when she felt him hard against her leg. Did I do that? In her head, she giggled, but on the outside all was motion and electricity and a whirlwind.
She didn’t remember leaving her feet, but there she was, lying on her back on the conference table just like she’d imagined it only minutes ago, only the shirt he ripped off of her was his own, and her skirt was gone just as fast. She did hope he hadn’t ripped that. It really was her favorite.
No more thought — Ted was moving with animal ferocity to put himself between her legs, dragging her to the edge of the table. Her fingers couldn’t move fast enough to get all his shirt buttons undone; impatiently, he ripped his way out of it. She melted when she saw those arms come rippling out to plant themselves on either side of her head like steel pillars, and he was bending to kiss her again, hot, searching.
For all his impatience, his tongue moved slowly in her mouth, twisting and tickling her tongue, running along the insides of her lips. She tried to push hers into his mouth, but he was having none of it, and his tongue conquered hers in every way.
Her hands ran up his sides and came to rest against his chest; she reveled in the tension and strength she found there. Oh, she was swimming in excitement, and she hoped he wouldn’t mind when he finally got around to taking off her panties that he could probably wring them out.
His thighs were pressing hers farther apart, bringing his body ever closer to hers. She fumbled at his belt, but he grabbed her wrists and pulled her arms up above her head, pinning them there with one hand while he slid the other under her bra. Ecstasy, when he rolled her nipple between his middle and index fingers. He pulled his hand out and snapped her bra open. Thank the stars she’d remembered to put on the front closure today. Would’ve been hell to wait for him to fumble at the back clasps.